AMD has made some gains in mobile technology, but has been only marginally successful. There is a higher level of integration with notebooks than with desktop PCs, which gives Intel an edge since they are focused on a complete mobile platform.
The problem is, to be at that nirvana, Apple would have to have the ISVs increase their investment on Apple hardware, at least in the transition. That is very difficult for Apple.
Those do not appear to be cherry-picked numbers of some particular benchmark on a blue moon with a tailwind blowing.
Particularly with this kind of niche, this isn't really so much about the box, it's about channels and go-to-market. It's about setting up distribution and supply partners more than it is about the right box.
They are all comparable in performance for high-end, non-X86 architectures.
Basically, no one ever used hardware-based IA-32 execution, so better to use the silicon for something else. Of course, basically no one uses software-based emulation either, but at least that doesn't cost chip real estate.
It's still not clear how visible that will be. I don't think it will be pervasive in 2006.
Obviously, they have to sell lots of systems of this size to pay back what has to be a considerably larger R&D investment than they have even with Galaxy.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, there would not be an Itanium today.
Enterprises must either adopt multi core or stick with slower chips.